In Praise of Shadows
by yllimilly
Summary: AU. A tale of princes, witches and poisoned apples... turned upside down. A brief retelling of Snow White, complete with a lonely witch, a mischevious demon and a possessed prince. Thiefshipping.


_A tale of witches, princes and poisoned apples... turned upside down: this is a brief revisiting of Snow White written for the Secret Santa project on the lj comm ygodrabble. Merry Christmas, _**rohanfox**_! ;)_

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**In Praise of Shadows**

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Malik had stopped worrying about the servants' inquisitive glares and condemning whispers long ago, lowering his head and scurrying past the meager hordes of men and women that were, in theory, not supposed to speak in his presence unless spoken to.

_The Prince is not well_, or so went the rumours, audible amongst the snippets of whispers barely concealed from Malik when his back was turned from the servant girls in the kitchen. _The Prince is vain and weak and _he has gone mad, or so everyone agreed; he had never clearly heard the words but he could tell from the looks the stable boys gave him. Unable to wield the sword or to manage his country's affairs, he let Isis and Rishid, his sister and Chancellor, handle his people's fate for him.

Consequently, the only humans he could ever bring himself to love spent most of their time away from him, warring in the Northern Lands. And because he'd lost the respect of his servants, the misanthrope noble immured himself in his boudoir, feeding on nothing but apples and nectar and dreams, taking refuge behind the heavy velvet curtains that separated him from the castle's other inhabitants.

The sunkissed Narcissus-turned-recluse would spend days and nights recklessly caressing the mirror that stood on his dresser with languid fingertips, calling out to the unlikely companion whose existence remained hidden from the outside world. Feverish and intoxicated by the soothing voice of the demon who looked so like a warped version of himself, Malik wished he could fade away and drown into the immaterial embrace of the one who swore he had eyes only for him.

"Tell me, Spirit" he urged in the middle of one vapid night, leaning so frightfully close to the edge of the mirror that he felt a slight chill, then a sting tugging at his lower lip. "Tell me I am beautiful." From the corner of an amethyst eye Malik could see the reflection of his twin, burnt bones underneath burnt skin splayed on the blotched deerskin by his bed. If Malik turned his head he would see nobody lounging in his room; the demon existed only on the other side of the mirror.

"Beautiful you _are_, my Prince." His perpetual smile widened and his teeth glistened like the setting sun.

"Tell me I'm the fairest one of them all," the boy pressed.

"You are fair, it is true." The golden devil paused for dramatic effect. "But there is one who is still a thousand times fairer than you." At these careless words he threw his head back and indulged in laughter, inconsequential and uncaring.

"No," Malik distanced himself from the mirror, "you can't -"

"But I can, and I do, my Prince," retorted the spirit unassumingly. "You will see," he continued in the pacifying tone that earned him Malik's forgiveness everytime.

The looking glass whitened and blurred until the young Prince could not even see himself; in lieu of his reflection he saw barren landscape of immaculate white plains, a marsh, and some snow burdened evergreens.

The Northern Lands.

There was a run-down shed exhaling light charcoal clouds from different holes in the rooftop. Beside it, a boy (not much older than he was), his wiry calves whiter than the snow surrounding them - was he barefoot? He was most certainly poor, ill-mannered, illiterate. Malik could not bring himself to accept that the demon considered such a boy to be worthy of his attention.

"Why..." His failure to comprehend trailed off, and he heard the disembodied laughter resonate in his head once more. Why did this boy live alone on the fringe of the Northern Forest? What was he gathering juniper berries for, where did he come from, what was his -

"Bakura."

Immediately the pale boy in the mirror turned to Malik as if though he had heard his name, and smirked at him. The Prince, who had been until now lost in contemplation, looked away from his image; he wanted him nowhere near him, he wanted him forgotten, and most of all he wanted his name to be erased from this world and the world beyond the looking glass, to never hear his own beloved demon utter it ever again.

Only then he would be able to erase the boy's burning gaze from his memory.

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_Shards of light pierced through the roof of the witch's lair - nothing more than a shed with a glass covered slit, nested between two wooden planks, for a window. On every wall hung shelves pupolated with the frail skeletons of various roots and herbs, hung to dry in the winter, and in smudged jars the wombs of small mammals, cocoons of hibernating larvae and the bustling nests of greater arachnids, marinating in toxic fluids. _

_A timid expanse of snow blanketed the floor timidly near the entrance; on it were imprinted the delicate shapes of her bare feet. Unfazed by the winter cold, she wore nothing but a soiled linen robe that clashed against her alabastrine skin, a trait that would make every female of the kingdom envious of her condition if they would allow her amongst them... She braced herself, clasping at her rugged elbows, not against the cold, but against the void that permeated her home. For miles on end, in the marsh and in the undergrowth, roamed no one but beasts, and the plains to the East were but a frozen desert, a white oblivion in which she had more than once hoped she could lose herself in._

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The crisp winter air prickled at the Prince's lungs pleasantly. His irises pained him, clenching when he exited the clement darkness of the carriage and was assaulted by the too luminous, frozen plains that surged eastwards of the forest. The male heir to the Ishtar clan was laying foot on northern soil for the first time.

The snow on the seemingly unused path to the isolated cabin was covered in a thick layer of ice that crunched under the sole of his boots. Everywhere around him rivulets of icy water serpented from the depths of undergrowth to the quiet marshes. Malik even recognized the juniper tree which those ever so slender fingers had touched... He shook his head, clutching at the basket whose contents were wrapped in lilac silk, and nearly lost his balance when he was startled by the whinnying of the horse.

What barely qualified as a cottage was a truly wreck; snow could easily engulf itself in the too wide gap below the filthy door, and where there once might have been a window now hung wooden planks of a type of wood, paler and browner, different than that which the walls were made out of. There was no smoke emanating from the rooftop to indicate that his improbable host was in for the day, but because the noble had taken great pains in leaving his lair of sorts _just_ to deal with the boy, he lifted a nimble fist and tapped at the door reluctantly.

"That door hasn't been used at all since Mother passed away," came a ragged but boyish voice from behind the corner of the house. It was him, the young savage whose airy name evaded Malik's lips, earning a half-smile from the one concerned:

"Bakura."

Sharp and rough, Bakura's features did not ascribe to classical beauty, but Malik could not help but look at him nonetheless. He wore next to nothing, apparently unconcerned by his own welfare, leaning leisurely against his cabin like he had all the time in the world. Wild, silver strands of hair that had certainly never been groomed framed his delicate features and frosty eyelashes framed deep rosewood eyes; his cheeks looked like marble in the uniform light of the overcast sky.

"You- you are not to speak unless spoken to," reminded the noble in his defence, lowering his eyes, unable to bring himself to look away from the boy's bony limbs, the murky veins pulsing around dark, bony kneecaps who protruded from under the diaphanous skin of his legs. They seemed to stem from the thick layer snow he was standing in. Bakura - did he not also have a surname? - was most likely barefoot, again - and why wouldn't the warmth of his breath dissolve in misty clouds when he spoke?

"Aren't you cold?" inquired the fairest one. It was as if though the Prince had not spoken at all. The feral boy was definitely ill-mannered. Surely he had never been introduced to the rigorous science of etiquette, either.

Bakura crossed his arms, unapologetically confident about the way he allowed himself to scrutinize the Prince. His stare made him feel naked, just like he did when during his first encounters with the spirit of the mirror, before he became accustomed to it, and Malik forgot the reason why he came here in the first place.

"So are you going to give me that apple or not?" When he received no response from his visitor, the boy explained, with a malicious grin that revealed a row of perfectly aligned, ivory teeth: "I can smell it from here - if I were rude I'd say the smell is nauseating. I'm not fond of sweets, but a gift is a gift, right?"

Without thinking Malik dug into the basket for the wretched fruit, stepping toward the prey who was studying him with a predatorial glare.

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_With her translucent finger she began tracing a pattern in the corner of her soot laden dwelling that was most remote from light; a wide triangle inscribed inside a circle. She then brought the black tip of her index to the broken edge of the window pane and let it slide until a thick stream of blood oozed from it; it leaked on the outside windowsill until it was was greedily absorbed in the clean, fresh snow. _

_Red against white. _

_The girl's thin, ashen lips twisted into a smile. _

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On the ride back to the castle Malik could not bring himself listen to his chauffeur, who, encouraged by his master's first break from his agoraphobia, had set for himself the ambitious goal of teaching him about the geography of his own country. No, the Prince would not concentrate on memorizing names of rivers and mountain ranges. His heart was somewhere else, somersaulting at every jolt of the carriage or at the thought of the rapid, almost animalistic way the pale boy snatched not only the apple but also the docile hand that held it. He remembered the unnaturally sharp canine exposed when he stretched his jaw to bite into the apple, the feeling of one clear streak of sweet juice running down down Bakura's glacial fingers and into his own hand. The stark, vivid contrast of the fruit's skin against the boy's.

Red against white.

The heel of his hand still smelled of nectar and Malik was tempted to give it a lick, just to test the waters - to feel, too, even only on the tip of his tongue, the numbness that he knew had spread to the orphan's lungs by now.

Something inside him twisted and churned; the realization of having met one's goal, the heady impression of power that came with the other realization, irrevocable this time, that a human being _had died at his hands_.

No, the boy's body would surely have succumbed to frostbite by the end of the first winter spent without a mother to properly care for him, yes. That was the most logical outcome, he decided; now, why couldn't he rather rationalize that he had accomplished what he had set off to do in the first place, to eliminate his rival? Good riddance; he was now the most beautiful creature in the kingdom, he wouldn't have to worry about hearing his otherworldly companion utter that foreign name ever again.

But why, he wondered, couldn't that set his heart to rest? And why could he not bring himself to care as much (as he used to) about being the center of the delusory demon's universe?

Exhausted by the ride to the castle, Malik set off to bed without spurring his customary conversations with the one who dwelled in the reflection of the mirror. Unexpectedly, he managed to spend the evening undisturbed by the low voice of his unlikely twin, and leisurely waited for sleep to take him.

But the golden boy was restless, stirring and sweating in the moist coldness permeating his room. He thought again of the savage and his glacial fingers; his winterkissed, charred lips, vermilion under some drier, blemished patches of dead skin. It seemed to be the only corporeal detail about the boy, and Malik found himself overwhelmed with the terrifying possibility that he might really have imagined the whole thing, that the spirit of the mirror was driving him mad, that what little strand of sanity that he had left was slowly slipping away from him...

Again he brought his hand close to his lips and inhaled deeply the sweet scent that lingered on its palm. 'Nauseating', the boy had said in that somewhat deep, rather breathy voice of his. In one impulsive gesture he licked the sticky juice smeared on his hand. He hesitated between _relief_ - for the femiliar, addictive taste on the roof of his palate was proof that he had not imagined today's events - or _regret_, for he was now angry of having listened to the demon's advice. He had been the one who brought up the idea of killing the boy.

As he drifted out of consciousness, Malik recognized that the peasant girls peeling potatoes in his kitchen had been right all along: he was _weak_.

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_She dug the leaking finger in her mouth, sucking on the wound until her tongue was saturated with the coppery taste of her own blood. It trickled down her chin and unto the floor, in the very centre of the symbol she'd drawn, and she stepped back cautiously as to exit the enclosure. One silver hair was dropped in the warm, glistening puddle and from her throat came the forbidden prayers that would summon the shadow demon, alien and unintelligible. _

_From the darkest corner of the room, tendrils of darkness crawled to the center of the traced ring, gathering in a turbid cloud and growing denser as she fell prey to a trance one can only embrace when speaking in tongues. Listless, she fell to her knees, lauding the materializing demon, barely making out his taurean silhouette against the darkness. When the incantation was complete she marveled at the statuesque and wraithlike form of the trapped beast, unable to pry herself away from his imperious gaze, abandoning herself to his majesty._

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The moon came to a full cycle and although he had been trying to distract himself - he even risked conversing with a few servants - Malik hadn't been able to spend a single night without wondering about the wintry boy he left to die, nursing the parasitic guilt that gnawed away at his heart and mind.

A thin but uniform film of dust now covered the mirror like a protective veil. The candle on the dresser shone bright but its reflection only a dreamy blur; _I shouldn't give in_, thought Malik, halting his fingers on their race to the looking glass, _I should _forget_ and start anew_. His new experiences in the real world hadn't proved to be as painful as he thought they would be, but remorse still gnawed away at his heart and he needed some form of closure to be able to go on. He intended to implore the spirit of the mirror to show him the boy's face one last time.

And so his tanned fingers caked themselves with soft, ashen dust as they wiped the polished surface mirror into limpidity, and for the first time Malik could see the clear reflection of his smile - his own - in the sweet, amber glow of the flame.

"Tell me, Spirit" he urged with a commanding voice, "no, _show_ me. Show me _he_ who was the fairest one of all." The reflection of the flame wavered but the speck of light atop of the real candle remained unperturbed. Malik was soon able to make out the threatening features of the fiend's image behind him; his inviting chest beckoned his touch, and the noble feared he might lose himself in the suave voice he had not quite been able to leave behind in the past few weeks.

"How very convenient it must be," the visitor hissed, "to have your own demon at your service." On his forehead a symbol glowed, but Malik could not very well delineate its shape, for his there was a warm sting in his tear ducts that rendered his vision hazier than normal. "Was I not here for you when you were lonely? Did I not serve you, unfailingly, every lie you wished to hear, when you wanted to hear them?" His words were _biting_ because they rang true to the Prince's ears.

The dissimilar twins stood, tense for a moment, and Malik remembered that he only had to close his eyes to make the demon disappear. When he blinked them back open, he could see clearly the triangle and circle glowing on the being's forehead.

"Show me," the human demanded once more. "Show me the boy that I _killed_!"

Revealing a row of teeth that were not ivory like the pale boy's, but oddly golden, the demon snarled: "Do you think so highly of yourself? That a weakling like you could be able to kill a man? Think again, boy-" he ran a thin brown tongue on his seemingly decaying teeth - "_what_ truly happened to the lone boy living on the fringe of the wastelands?"

For a second, there lurked on the demon's face an undecipherable emotion: as abruptly as he had appeared, he vanished. Only the incandescent symbol on his forehead persisted, as if imprinted on the looking glass, and when Malik raised tentative fingers to the sacred marking, cautious as if it were to burn, the marking moved, growing nearer and brighter. When it seemed to hang close to Malik in the reflection of the mirror, the symbol fainted, and the meek flame on the material side of the mirror wavered.

From the candle light Malik could make out a familiar face whose unabashed features had the Prince's shoulders sag in relief, all too grateful to see that smirk, those rich dark eyes in which the flame seemed to dance freely, that unruly heap of silver hair. The demon had granted him one last wish.

But the Prince knew his torturing consort to be facetious, if not downright cruel. And so, hurriedly, he traced the contour of the boy's face on the glass, running a thumb over the chapped lips he'd never gotten to... to taste. Yes. There was no point in nursing his misplaced pride now, thought Malik. He hadn't really wanted to crush the boy, but rather to tame him, make him _his_, to wallow in his unspoiled spirit.

"You'll have to keep me posted, because I can't read your mind like your friend could." That exact same low, boyish voice, dark and playful.

"Bakura." Malik stood upright before the mirror, embarrassed that he had just revealed the first word that crossed his mind, and took in the reflection of the pale boy in the mirror. Just like the spirit of the mirror had, the wild boy appeared to stand right behind Malik. If he tilted his head back a little he could feel a chill on his shoulder where the illusion's breath landed.

"I didn't," Malik started tentatively, then heaved a defeated sigh as he reminded himself of his own weakness. "Do, I _did_ mean to destroy you." He paused to examine Bakura's face closely; it did not flinch. Malik's mouth went dry; he had long ago prepared himself to accept that he did not deserve his forgiveness. "For that I am sorry." Unable to tear his gaze away from the mirror but unable to see the boy's features any longer, he blew the flame of the candle.

Malik was bathed alone in the darkness, just like those innumerable nights before he first came upon the demon of the mirror and his intoxicating lies.

For a while there was nothing in the air but the burnt wick of the candle and the faint echo of his heart drumming against the inside walls of his ribcage. And then, against all odds, the breathy, almost ripe voice of the boy.

"Is that it? You are blowing me away? It'll take more than that to get rid of me," mused the new spirit playfully.

Malik gasped, and if he could see himself he would confirm that he was paling beyond what is humanly possible. "Have you," he swallowed, "have you come back to _haunt_ me?" He could hardly conceal the panic as he spoke.

A chuckle. The candle fell to the floor in a muted thump. And then, long wiry fingers treading on Malik's back, nape, chin, collarbone, glacial and everywhere at once; he could only let out a strangled moan in surprise. The thought of screaming for help crossed his mind, but it was immediately dismissed.

"I don't think you quite understand what I am, my Prince," Bakura mused. His fingertips crawled on Malik's jawline, soft and cold, like small polished stones.

When Bakura's touch shifted to his shoulders, Malik spun around to face him, lifting both hands blindly in front of him until they bumped against the rough textiles of the rags he wore. As if moved by a will of their own they gauchely ventured on the smooth, marble skin he had so devoured with his eyes when he had first seen him. One warm hand found its way to the middle of the boy's chest, searching in vain for an echo of the palpitations of the Prince's heart.

"Tell me, Bakura" he pressed in a half whisper, letting the intruder seize the questioning hand in his own, "tell me what you are, then." For all answer he heard a frank but quiet laugh, and felt blood rushing to his cheeks when his captive hand was forcibly spread out and held between the boy's equally frigid cheek and hand; he felt the little hairs on his forearm raise when he felt the Bakura's other arm brush against his, his free hand snaking its way to the small of his back.

"You still reek of apples," Bakura said softly, closing the gap between their bodies. "But I must say that the poison makes the scent a little more bearable."

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"_My Master," she began, bringing herself dangerously close to the enclosure. "My Lord."_

_He would not respond to her, that much she knew; he would merely listen to her request, and she would let him take what he wanted in exchange. A gust of wind came sweeping the powdered snow from the rooftop and into the house; glittering motes slowly descended to the floor. The speckles of whiteness sparkled for an instant before melting away completely into darker dots, invisible, forgotten. _

_The summoner, still kneeling before the demon, sent a quivering hand ghosting over its cloudy legs, aching to touch him yet careful enough to remain out of his reach. "I want a child," she confessed before closing her eyes to steady the tremor in her voice. "Give me a child white as snow, red as blood, black as the shadows." In her metallic eyes, a hopeful look. "Grant me that wish, and I shall be content," she professed with finality. _

_She stood up, trembling, and extended her arm to the demon as an offering; when her limb trespassed the enclosure he seized it like an asp falling on its prey. Her fingers, then her hand and wrist blanched when he drew the blood from her wound, and she took solace in the promise of companionship in order__ to ward off the pain_. Her irises narrowed into slits and her skin cracked and fractionated into a thousand silvery scales; she writhed and squirmed in the demon's hold, acknowledging, as she felt the last of her sentient thoughts ebbing away, that being stripped once more of the humanity_ she had come to curse and cherish was, in the end, a small price to pay in the face of loneliness._

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_~fin~_

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_Story loosely inspired by Jun'ichiro Taniguchi's essay of the same title._

___Beta'ed by the fabulous _LadyBlackwell_._  



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